Senate

Both Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Gioannoulias went way negative today with new ads. To wit:

As a 34-year-old myself, I think 34-year-olds everywhere should protest this age-based smear. John F. Kennedy began his campaign for the U.S. senate, which he won, when he was 34. And there are lots of other 34-year-olds of …

Time.com just posted my story about the latest drama in South Carolina, the election of Alvin Greene as the Democratic nominee to challenge Sen. Jim DeMint. I spent the day Monday with Greene and his challenger, Vic Rawl, who will go before the state Democratic Party to protest the election results this afternoon. An excerpt:

Our colleague Michael Grunwald has a story out today on the likely Democratic candidate in the race for Florida’s Senate seat. Yes, a Democrat is running, despite that much of the political oxygen is being sucked up by Republican candidate Marco Rubio and newly minted independent Charlie Crist. That Democrat is Kendrick Meek and although …

Sure, he’s a loooooooong way from, um, winning — or even being in a position to win. But he’s had a good month and his poll numbers are finally going slightly north. On the other hand, they could’ve hardly gotten worse. A webstory today from me.

Back in February I wrote about how the Republicans weren’t likely to take back the Senate this cycle. In order to really come within striking distance of the Democrats’ 10-seat advantage, I wrote, they’ve have to not only hold all their own seats and take Delaware, North Dakota, Nevada, Arkansas, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Indiana …

The Senate tonight passed a sweeping overhaul of the rules that govern Wall Street with the aim of better protecting Main Street if the markets were ever to meltdown again. The legislation would greatly empower the Federal Reserve Bank to monitor and oversee financial flows in order to predict and prevent a massive pooling of risk – …

On Tuesday night as Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter took the stage to give his concession speech he thanked the crowd and remarked at the large number of media in the room – which nearly doubled the size of his audience. “Look at all these reporters, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many,” he said chuckling lightly at his …

Arlen Specter has survived a lot of things: a brain tumor, two bouts with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and five squeaker elections for the U.S. Senate. But in an anti-establishment year where the far right hates the moderates and the far left hates the moderates, Specter – whose voting record over the past 30 years is almost perfectly down the …

From TIME’s Pentagon Correspondent, Mark Thompson, who also happens to hail from the Nutmeg State:

Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat seeking to succeed Christopher Dodd in the U.S. Senate, did a lot more fighting over Vietnam Tuesday than he ever did inside the country. That’s because, despite his claims to the contrary, he

What is it about Senator Lindsey Graham that brings out the Mr. Smith in the most inveterate politicians? First, Chuck Schumer unveils their working draft of immigration legislation in the vain hope that by making a good faith, bipartisan bid some other Republicans might sign on; the response has not been deafening. Now Senators John …

Wallace C. Tubeville, a former Goldman Sachs VP and former CEO of derivative broker VMAC, has done us all a service. In a post on New Deal 2.0, he lays out the over-the-counter derivative trader’s view of why financial reform is a bad thing.

A level playing field is anathema to the trader. Successful traders must have advantages over